The present invention relates to a method for controlling the status of a drive of an apparatus for reading from and/or writing to recording media.
An apparatus for reading from and/or writing to recording media generally comprises, among other components, a drive for accommodating and accessing a recording medium, and electronic circuitry, e.g. for controlling the drive or for processing the data obtained from the recording medium. It is well known in the art, e.g. from optical disc drives, to provide a drive with means for controlling certain conditions of the drive. For example, in many drives detectors are provided which determine if a tray for accommodating the recording medium is fully extracted from (“tray open”) or retracted into (“tray closed”) the drive. However, this status information or drive state is only used by the drive, it is not reported to the controller.
To make the operation of the drive more transparent to the apparatus for reading from and/or writing to recording media, it is desirable to make the drive status information available to the controller. Recent drives have, therefore, been provided with an interface, which is used for reporting the drive status information to an external controller. In addition, a plurality of additional drive states has been introduced. Further to the known drive states “tray open” and “tray closed”, the additional drive states indicate if the tray is in process of opening or closing or-if a recording medium has been detected. In this way the controller is always informed about the status of the drive. This information can be used, for example, to prevent conflicting operations like trying to access the recording medium when the tray is in process of opening or closing. In this way operation errors are avoided. However, it might happen that the drive states change so fast that one or more drive states are not noticed by the controller. This can cause an erroneous operation of the drive.